Anybody ever deleted a whole album?

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Recycled_Brains
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Post by Recycled_Brains » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:15 am

A while back I accidentally deleted a shit load of audio files for a few songs that I had just recorded. It was just a stupid and inexperienced error on my part. I had tracked 6 songs onto one big PT session file (I do this when tracking to speed up the workflow), with the intention of separating each song into its own session file afterwards, for mixing.

When I imported the [then consolidated] audio files for each song into its respective session file, I hit "add" instead of "copy", so the audio files were never copied into their respective sessions' audio file folders. I then, of course, went and deleted all of the files from the original drive, to free up the space, and emptied the trash.

As I opened each song's session file, I almost threw up on myself. I fealt like I just ran over someone's cat.

Luckily there was a backup at the studio where the tracking was done. The head engineer laughed, because I called him in such a panic. One of the worst feelings I've ever had.

I immediately went out and bought more HD storage for backups.

Now I back up sessions everytime I work on them. Even if I only opened the song for 1 minute to turn the snare up a db.... It gets backed up.

Once a mix is done, I backup to an additional drive (3 total), and make a couple DVD backups as well.

I've learned a lot from my mistakes.
Ryan Slowey
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Post by chris harris » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:45 am

I've told this story before....

One night, several years ago, I was up late, just basically practicing recording. I decided that I'd do a wicked, deep-voiced cover of Journey's Faithfully.

Now, I'm not much of a drummer. And, I was even sketchier back then. So, I spent a good two or three hours that night getting all of the big badass tom rolls right. The rest of the stuff was much easier. So, I went to bed that night with a pretty killer cover in the can.

When I woke up the next day, and went to check out my great cover, something was wrong. Everything was there EXCEPT the fucking tom tracks!! I still had toms in the overheads. But, without the close tom tracks, it just wasn't nearly as cool as it was the night before.

I ended up deleting the entire song in disgust. I still don't know why JUST THOSE TRACKS happened to disappear.

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Post by Corey Y » Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:51 am

I didn't delete it, but I made it completely irretrievable. When I first got my Akai DPS24, I had just finished editing and mixing a 6 track EP when I made some fatal goof up. Every piece of information for the project got dumped, along with every snippet of edited information. I hadn't set the internal clock right, so there were no proper time codes for restoring. Even if I had, I hadn't cleared the hard drive of all the deleted and edited stuff AND it's non destructive editing and I hadn't resampled all the tracks to make them continuous. Also, I would have had to identify every similar track by ear (snare top/bottom, left and right overheads, etc.). So it was just thousands of short clips of tracks, some of which were good, some edits and some things that were recorded over with punch ins, virtual tracks, etc. all with alphanumeric designations. After some visits to the DPSworld forum I figured out my mistake and how to NEVER to repeat it. It also taught me some valuable lessons about how the machine works in general and how to keep it running well.

That was pretty frightening. I did the recording for a friend's band for free though, so they were understanding. We started over from scratch and in the end it came out a better product, because I had all the previous sessions to learn the songs by heart and figure out what I would have done differently to capture the sounds they wanted better. Still, very humbling to have to tell them I screwed up in such a profound way from such a very small mistake. I didn't read the manual thoroughly enough to know to look for the tiny little symbol that shows the machine is processing information, so you don't turn it off.

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Post by jessejamietig » Thu Jan 08, 2009 9:31 am

i've had two things happen in my audio career. The first happened a long time ago in the 2' 24 track days. It was my first time as a head engineer in a big time studio. I was tracking a band all live and we were doing about 6 songs. I had no assistant so I was tapeop and engineer. We cut three songs with no problems, then we did a fourth. They decided they wanted to do another take, so I made a locate point. What I forgot to realize is that I had a locate point in the middle of the third song on the tape. I hit that one instead without knowing. As they were laying down the track I realized what I had did and my heart skipped a beat and completely started jumping out of my chest.
I didn't know what I was going to tell the band, but the song ended and I just came out with it. Luckily the band was cool with it and went back and tracked song 3. It was a great relief on my part. It also helped that it was an overnight session at dirt cheap rates.

The second thing I did was around the year 2000. I had started a project on 2" and then transfered it to ProTools. I had finally realized that you could mix internally in ProTools and decided to go that way, because I only had one interface. I had tracked 10 songs and put one of them on my 4 gig drive. I was mixing the song which took about 10 hours with edits and automation(using a mouse). I bounced the song to disk on the same drive. The client loved it, and I offered to burn a CD, but he said "Don't worry about it I'll take a CD when we finish the 10 songs." The next day I went to hook up the drive and it would not mount. I was fucked. Fortunately it went alright and the client decided to just do a remix from the back up data CD's of the original ProTools transfers. It turned out just fine in the end.

Lesson is, back up sessions to two drives. It is a must.

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Post by Brett Siler » Thu Jan 08, 2009 10:55 am

jessejamietig wrote: Lesson is, back up sessions to two drives. It is a must.
Absolutely!

I had two things happen to me. One was in the middle of two differnt sessions, and the heat sink on my computer stopped working and melted the internal harddrive and mother board! That really fucking sucked... I called the and told them and just offered them free recordings when I got a new computer.

The next was this bluegrass band, they recorded a whole album, it wasn't mixed yet but they paid me anyway and I don't know what I did the next day when I went to mix the songs, they were all gone! The worst of it all was one of the guys was shipping off for the Marines, and another guy was moving across the nation. So there was no way to go back and redo it. I just returned the money and hung my head in shame. I felt really dumb..

That was years ago and I wasn't as very computer savvy when that stuff happened (still not all that much), but I absolutly have the files on at least two drives at all times now until the session is over then I burn it on DVD and give to the band so they is less chance of me fucking things up.. ha

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Post by lyman » Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:00 pm

not a whole song, but a guitar track. i was using a tascam 8 track digital unit for portability's sake since we were recording in the band's practice space and another location. i accidentally unplugged the stupid thing without saving and lost the track. but the guy was cool about it; the next session he duplicated it and we moved on to vocals. well, during the course of recording vocals i recorded over it and he had to do it AGAIN. he was not so happy to record it for the third time though.....

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Post by Nick Sevilla » Fri Jan 09, 2009 3:24 pm

My deletion was hardly accidental.

A rookie band did not want to pay for the production of their record, nor sign any agreement. I was green then, and allowed myself to work pro bono until they got a deal.

It's gone... 1 year of work 'bye bye'... and I actually enjoyed deleting it.

Since I owned the recordings, their lawyer said they could do nothing about it, except pay, or shut up.

Awesome. I felt a lot of relief with each new "delete" button press. I got death threats, etc... but am still here.

Cheers
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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Post by chris harris » Fri Jan 09, 2009 5:11 pm

They can afford a lawyer, but can't pay for their recordings?

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Nick Sevilla
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Post by Nick Sevilla » Fri Jan 09, 2009 7:39 pm

subatomic pieces wrote:They can afford a lawyer, but can't pay for their recordings?
Exactly... :lol:

I think they got in too far with the "we won't pay him" approach to making their record.

The lawyer, no doubt, laughed as much as I did.

Cheers
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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Post by dino » Sun Jan 11, 2009 7:10 am

In the wonderful world of video, file management and backup protocols became even more important once we switched from recording on tape to recording to P2 solid state memory cards. Because the cards are a couple of grand each, and are meant to be reused, there is no original tape to put on a shelf. Making multiple backups to multiple media, consistent and understandable labeling, and obsessive attention to detail absolutely necessary. I still get severe rectal puckering when reformatting a P2 card, even though I personally do the backups to HD, DVD, and VXA tape myself. It?s going to take a while to overcome that visceral reaction.

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Post by ELCUBO » Fri Jan 16, 2009 1:43 am

About 2 years ago, a external HD went down,,,i tried to figure out what was hapening and took it out of the enclosure and connect directly to the SATA input in the motherboard...man,,,the HD got in fire in my hands!!!!! that was a sad day to me...

recently...i dunno why, but i deleted by accident a trombon from a song...and i was delayed 2 days from the dead line...fortunaly, the project goes well and got number 1 in the charts of my country...but the xecutive producer wasnt very happy with me...shit happens... :roll:

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Post by benjc » Fri Jan 16, 2009 5:42 am

I lost a whole album.

I tracked a record this summer with a band from Austin called Tristero. We spent about two weeks tracking 15 songs for the album at my school's studio. I attempted to back up all the files (30 gigs worth) on to one of my drives, and it didn't completely transfer (wacky drive). I had just cleared some space on another drive to transfer it and when I went to the studio the WHOLE ALBUM was completely gone. It was on two different drives in the computer and all that remained was part of one song on one drive. There were also a handful of tunes that had managed to transfer to my wacky drive, though they were tunes that probably wouldn't make it onto the actual album. At first I suspected foul play due to the extremely strange circumstances (it was on two drives and nothing else was deleted) but it became clear that that was unlikely. This also occurred this past spring, though not as much information was lost. I talked to two of the tech guys at the college and neither of them could figure out what happened. At least we can re-track it better.
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decocco
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Post by decocco » Fri Jan 16, 2009 7:16 am

I've never deleted a whole album, but I did something awful on the first "real" session I engineered to 2" tape. The band had just finished the master take of a song but we wanted to punch in the bass for one little measure. I accidentally left ALL the tracks armed and punched in an entire measure of silence. I was so embarrassed! I never made that mistake again!
-Chris D.

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Post by cgarges » Fri Jan 16, 2009 8:07 am

decocco wrote:I accidentally left ALL the tracks armed and punched in an entire measure of silence. I was so embarrassed! I never made that mistake again!
I think every engineer worth his salt has done this on a linear recording format at one time or another. I've certainly done it and lots of people on here have mentioned it before. I totally know that feeling of "Yeah, I punched in the right place-- oh crap, why am I not hearing anything except what I just punched?"

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Post by cjmnash » Fri Jan 16, 2009 10:33 am

i haven't accidentally deleted an album (yet). i heavy into backing up, and at certain intervals of every project i do physical (dvd) backups as well.

sadly- other peoples lack of proper backup techniques/habits do end up costing me money though- at LEAST three times a year a mix project i have booked gets scrubbed because someone-usually in the band- loses most of, or the entire project.

a few years ago i met with a band who decided not to hire me for the whole project, but to do the recording themselves and have me mix. the accidentally deleted the project, rebooked the mix, recorded it all again- and then their ONLY drive failed. the asked how much it would cost to have me record their album- i said "it should take too much- you all know the songs by now!" and laughed.

didn't get the gig. LOL

-chris
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